


A Time Lord's Biggest Weakness

by tenscupcake



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Sickfic, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 21:03:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6300304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenscupcake/pseuds/tenscupcake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor picks up a bug on a balmy, unfamiliar planet that leaves Rose at a bit of a loss for how to take care of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Time Lord's Biggest Weakness

**Author's Note:**

> This is a gift for braveten on Tumblr, who requested it after winning a spot in my Tumblr awards earlier this year! Hope you guys enjoy :D It's rather silly. 
> 
> Ok, it's completely silly.
> 
> And honestly... I haven't actually written in a while, I feel terribly rusty. Please forgive me any stylistic sloppiness or grammatical errors!

Rose regains consciousness slowly.

Completely exhausted, she fights against it, willing to be pulled back under, to succumb to sleep again and only wake once she feels properly rested.

But then the visions flash behind her eyelids: the Doctor shouting that they’d been drugged and dropping to his knees as the deep green locals in the dining hall close in around them.

_Drugged._

Her head is throbbing with too much heat, like the blood vessels in it are about to burst. Her legs feel like they’ve been stretched, the joints in her knees and hips ache with a strange kind of tension she’s never felt before. No sound enters her ears save for a low, electric humming coming from somewhere by her feet. She can’t feel a surface beneath her, so she wriggles around a little, but there’s only air supporting her back, the only sensation it creates is a pressure closing around her sore ankles that makes her squeak with pain.

Oh bloody hell. This can’t be good.

Praying she won’t be met with any hostile creatures, she forces her eyes open despite the pounding in her head, and her grave suspicion is confirmed. The first things she sees are the brick wall several feet away, dirt looming above her head, and more bricks far below.

She grabs her head in both hands as the disorientation floods through her, along with a wave of nausea and a smarting throb deep in her head.

To her left, the Doctor has been strung up in the same fashion, glowing blue plasma stuff wrapped securely around his ankles suspending him from the brick ceiling. His coat, jacket, and shoes are missing, lifeless with his arms hanging beneath his head, untucked shirt ridden down to his chest. Glancing down (up?) at her own feet she sees the same exact kind of shackles around them.

Aside from the two of them, the room is empty. There’s a single, black wrought-iron gate through which she can see a long corridor that looks similar to the cell itself, but there seems to be no signs of life in that direction, either.

They’ve got to get down from here, before whoever locked them up comes back and inflicts something even worse upon them.

“Doctor!!!” Rose shouts as loudly as she can while still technically whispering.

Flexing her ab muscles and thrashing her legs, she tries to sway close enough to him that she can smack him awake. Pain flares up in her ankles where the invisible restraints are digging into her skin, and her numb toes tingle with the sudden increased blood flow. But her movements are too sloppy to get her any closer to the Doctor, and the shackles whooshing with energetic strain makes her head hurt even worse.

With a few deep breaths, she slows to a stop so she can try again. Swinging her arms towards him and coordinating her muscles, she overestimates the force she will need to reach across the gap, and slams into his side before she can even whack him in the arm.

“Rose!” the Doctor shouts as he jerks up, fighting gravity for a moment as he attempts to sit up, but quickly succumbs to it again.

Rose groans with the added pain of the impact, already feeling bruises forming on the bony bits like her hips and ribs.

“Agghh.” The Doctor winces once he’s past the initial shock, pressing a hand to his forehead. He fidgets his legs back and forth to test the restraints, and seems to find them formidable enough, as he gives up quickly. He turns his head to survey the room, and that search quickly comes up as blank as hers did a few minutes earlier.

With a sudden, hopeful gasp, he throws a hand over his left heart, but then his face falls again just as quickly and he groans in defeat.

“The sonic,” he laments.

“You haven’t got it in your trousers?”

“Rose, you know where I keep the sonic. Never once have I kept it in my bloody trousers.”

“All right, no need to get tetchy.” She crosses her arms.

He sighs. “Sorry.”

“You haven’t got anything that can get us out of these?”

“I might have something in…” His hands both dive into his trouser pockets. “... here… while you were asleep last week I went to Blargon VII and they had these… particle disruptors… HAH!”

“What?”

“I’ve got it!” he announces with glee, a smile lighting up his face as he holds up what looks like a tiny black torch.

“That thing’s gonna disable these?” she nods up to the glowing chains.

“Should do,” he assures her confidently, fiddling with tiny buttons on the device with his tongue touching his teeth. After several too-long seconds of concentration and mumbled calculations and estimations to himself, he aims the device at the panel next to where the restraints are sourced and presses something. A string of red energy launches from the handheld device, quickly encasing the panel in an electric glow before the entire thing shorts out with a cloud of smoke and the restraints flicker and disappear.

The Doctor faceplants into the dirt of the cell with a loud “OOF!” and the rest of his body crumples noisily behind it, kicking up a cloud of dust.

“Doctor! You all right?” she asks frantically.

“Grrrbhhh,” he mumbles into the dirt, wincing. She’s about to panic, but then his hands flex into fists a few times and he lifts his head incrementally to spit some brown stuff out of his mouth. He moves his arms to support himself on his elbows, and wipes a hand down his face, taking a fair amount of dirt with it.

“Good thing I’ve got strong teeth,” he teases. “I’d me missing half this smile now if I hadn’t.” He stretches his mouth artificially wide as he smiles to demonstrate his point, and though there’s some brown stuff between his teeth, he’s still gorgeous as ever.

Until she realizes she’s still strung up like a carcass.

“Stop muckin’ about and get me down!”

“All right, all right, easy.” He pushes onto all fours, testing various limbs and joints before pushing to his feet. He shrugs his shoulders and rolls his head with a few loud pops before walking closer to her. He puts his arm around her waist and holds her still, gripping rather tightly, as he tinkers with the device again with his free hand.

“Umm… what’re you doin’?” she asks, more flushed red in the face than just from hanging upside down.

“Making sure you don’t fall on your face, too,” he answers absently, like she’s thick for asking.

“Right.” She swallows hard, trying to get a bloody grip.

With another laser beep, he fires at the box above her feet, and she sags into the Doctor’s firm grip as the chains disappear.

“Right, then,” he grunts out, tilting a little with the added weight. He drops the device to the ground and circles his other arm around her while she gets her arms on the ground next to his feet. She supports most of her weight in a handstand, and he helps her get her legs back on the ground safely with no broken vertebrae or knocked-out teeth. Gentleman as always, he holds out his hand for hers to help her to her feet, and when she sways a little and grabs her forehead with the wave of vertigo, clutches her against his chest to ensure she stays upright.

“Blimey.” She fists her hands in his crinkled shirt, more creases forming between her fingers. “Never been upside down that long before.”

“Clearly you’ve never been to Soagantu,” he mutters under his breath.

“Wha’?”

“Never mind, let’s get out of here.”

They make it out of the fortress with mostly luck and stealth, though Rose has to wield her feminine charms to bribe one, and the Doctor his clever circumlocution to deceive another. And in the end, only one royal councilman has to be knocked to the ground with something else the Doctor finds in his trousers. A fairly painless escape, all things considered.

But they have a long walk back to the TARDIS.

They’d been transported to the castle in a hovercraft of sorts, and while the valleys and meadows of flowers stretching out before them were appealing when they arrived and the planet was waiting to be explored, they’re much less enticing now that trudging several miles through the floral stuff as fugitives is the only item on the agenda.

Twenty minutes and roughly one mile pass when the Doctor pulls down his rolled-up sleeves to the wrist and starts rubbing his arms. When she gives him a puzzled look, his eyebrows pull together.

“Bit chilly, isn’t it?” he asks, as a tiny shiver rolls down his body.

She regards him with nervous scrutiny, looking for signs of injury she may have missed earlier. It’s perfectly warm on this planet, and the temperature hasn’t changed so much as a degree since they began their walk. Little beads of sweat are dripping down her back beneath her shirt from the tiny blue sun that heats this planet shining against her skin.

“Doctor, ‘s like thirty degrees. And this sun is bloody hotter than ours, how can you be cold?”

“Really? Hm.” He shrugs. “Must be because I lost all my layers.” With a few final strokes of his hands down his biceps, he continues walking as normal.

It’s odd. Very odd. She’s always the first to complain about temperature. But then, he is rarely bereft of the twenty layers he usually wears, and he seems in good health besides the strange bout of shivering, so she lets it go.

After another mile or so of chatter about the chips they’re going to get that evening and the next galaxy they’ll be visiting, Rose notices the Doctor’s breathing has become labored. When she glances over, he is hugging his chest again.

“Doctor, are you all right?” she asks, touching a hand to his arm and slowing to a halt in the grass.

“Of course! Right as rain! Just a little chilly is all. Might be a side effect of whatever they knocked us out with. Didn’t get a chance to analyze it before it was metabolized. I’ll be good as new with some hydration. Cuppa tea, that’s all I need.”

On his insistence that he feels fine, she drops the subject again and they continue down the path.

“You sure we’re goin’ the right way?” she asks after another fifteen minutes. “I don’t remember smellin’ mangoes on the way there.

“I’m po-si-tive,” he enunciates confidently. “It’s a shortcut. Just over that hill there, we’ll see mango trees, cross over a pond and –”

There’s a sound like a shoe catching a rock, and the Doctor gasps.

Before she can catch him, the Doctor is sprawls across the burnt orange grass next to her with an ‘URF.’

“DOCTOR!” she shrieks, dropping to her knees.

“’M o…kay,” he moans, his face in the earth for the second time in far too short of a window.

“What’s gotten into you?” She’s properly frightened now, that he’s been poisoned or that something comparably terrible is going wrong. The Doctor can be haphazard, sure, and many of his world-saving tactics may lack finesse, but if there’s one thing he has, it’s a certain grace and balance when he moves. She’s never seen him fall over, even so much as stumble. “I’ve never seen you trip in my life.”

“I’ve tripped loads of times, Rose,” he assures her as she grabs his arm to help him to his feet. “Should’ve been there that time in my fifth regeneration, fell on my arse running from a Chalconian leopard.”

“You sure?” she asks, skeptical, holding her arms halfway out in case he drops again.

“Yep.” He smiles with a familiar twinkle in his eyes as he brushes some crushed blades of grass and flower petals off his trousers, so she at least concedes to stop bugging him until they get back to the TARDIS and she can force him to check himself out in the infirmary.

It isn’t much later that the TARDIS finally comes into view, the familiar perfume of the lavender blossoms gracing them through the light breeze on the hillside.

“Thank God,” Rose sighs, picking up speed to finally make it home. But she stops before she’s gone ten steps, because the Doctor is not matching her pace. When she turns around, he’s bent over slightly at the waist, arms tight around his chest again, and his teeth are chattering.

She runs the short distance back to him.

“Doctor, what’s wrong,” she demands, not even phrasing it as a question.

“I th-think s-something’s wrong.” He convulses with shivers again.

“You think?” she retorts, sharp with sarcasm.

“I’m t-trying to scan for f-foreign compounds in m-my…” He’s silent for a few seconds, and then lets out a shaky curse.

“What is it?”

She grabs his shoulders to indicate the sense of urgency with her question.

“A v-virus. I must’ve p-picked it up from the d-dirt. One of the v-very few I’m v-vulnerable to. I’m g-good at fighting things of but it’s a p-powerful one. There’ll be some s-side effects.”

“What sort of side effects?”

“Like a f-fever.”

“Right, I got that. Anything else?”

“N-not much. But if the fever g-gets high enough s-sometimes cause d-delirium. Dizziness. M-memory loss.”

Bloody hell. Delirium? Memory loss!? They’ve got to get him inside the TARDIS, and quick.

“Okay. You’re gonna be okay,” she reassures him, and loops an arm around his waist. “Let’s get you in the TARDIS, yeah? We’ll fix you up.”

He nods his head gratefully.

“Wait – I’m not gonna come down with this fever too, am I?”

He shakes his head. “W-won’t affect humans.”

Rose keeps a slow pace, not wanting to push his limits when he’s ill. Though the shivering continues most of the way there, it seems to quiet as they get closer to the TARDIS. He’s almost completely still when he slumps against the door and waits for her to unlock it.

“Hey, you’re not shivering so much anymore, that’s good, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah,” he drawls out with a nod. “Time Lords don’t shiver for long. Our physiology adapts to the altered temperature set point before long.”

She gets the key in the lock and pushes the doors open, and he barrels inside ahead of her, barely catching himself on a coral before he falls over again.

“Doctor, stop movin’ okay? Let me help. What do we do? What do I do? How do we get you better?” She tries to speak calmly but it comes out rather rushed and panicked.

“There’s a lot of things Time Lords are different. No. There’s a lot of different Time Lords that…” He pauses, holding his index finger out and slowing down. “There’s a lot… of things… that make Time Lords… different. But when it comes to sickness, they’re basically the same as humans: nutrition, rotter, and west.”

“Wha’?”

“What?” He looks as confused as she does, as though he can’t even understand what he just said.

Her best guess is that he had meant to say ‘water and rest’ and some consonants got mixed up. With the confusion setting in this fast, she’s struggling to maintain an aura of composure and not completely break down in front of him. She has no idea how to handle this situation; the Doctor has never been ill. She wasn’t even sure he _could_ get ill. Figured Time Lords were too advanced and sophisticated for that. Even when the Doctor has been physically restrained or assaulted, she’s never seen his razor-sharp intellect dulled by anything or anyone. It’s frightening to watch his mind going off the rails.

“I’m tired, Rose,” he whinges, whirling around on his toes to walk up the ramp.

“Let’s get you to bed, yeah?” She tries to grab his hand before he can get away from her, but he stumbles towards the railing, and the moment his hips collide with it, he flips over and tumbles onto the grating with a thud. Several thuds, actually. And she thinks one of them was his head.

“My God, Doctor,” she cries as she jumps over to pull him up. When he sits up, he looks at her, then looks around the room, surveying it like he’s never seen it before.

“How did I get down here?” he asks, raising one eyebrow.

“You fell. C’mon, I’ll help you up. It’s time for bed.”

“Okay. Maybe sleep would be good, I don’t feel very well.” He grimaces.

“I know. You’re sick.” It takes all of her strength to get him back on his feet, and it’s no easy task to keep someone as tall and lanky as the Doctor walking straight when he’s dizzy and she’s a foot shorter than he is. Eventually, though, she gets him to his room (all the while he goes on about putting carpet on the floor of the control room so that in case anyone else falls they don’t hurt themselves).

She manages to get him tucked into bed, and sits down on top of the duvet next to him and presses the back of her hand to his forehead. His normally slightly-cooler-than-human skin is scorching. To say she’s anxious would be an understatement.

“You sure you don’t need an ice bath instead of all these blankets? You’re burnin’ up.” If this were anything like a human fever, she could get charged with neglect for covering up a high fever patient with a load of blankets.

“Your hand is cold,” he says, ignoring her question. “But it feels good. It always does. Feel good. When you touch me.” He fidgets under the blanket “I wish you’d touch me more often.”

Her jaw drops open. Did he just… no. He’s gone completely barmy, nothing he says can be taken seriously.

“Doctor,” she asserts more forcefully. “Do I need to be getting you in an ice bath or something?”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes dramatically.

“I’m not a human, Rose. I can’t die from my own body heating up the turn too much. But you’re a human. A soft, squishy, warm little human.” He pokes her in the side with his finger, and she recoils from his hand, shocked that he’d use such a gesture. “Who can die from that. But you won’t. Not while you’re with me, anyway.” He smiles as his head sinks deeper into his pillow and he closes his eyes. It’s at least a relief that he can’t see how fiercely she’s blushing with his eyes closed. And hopefully he can’t detect it with his other ridiculously acute Time Lord senses while he’s this high with a fever, either.

“So you don’t need ice?”

“No,” he groans, almost angry this time. “I’m fine. But I need the rest of water.”

“Water? And rest?”

“Yeah.” He nods.

“Are you gonna be all right if I go and get you some?”

“Mmhmm.” He nods again.

She does one practice run by ducking by the foot of the bed for a solid thirty seconds, and when he doesn’t budge from his spot, she’s confident enough it’s safe to leave him on his own without him doing something completely insane.

She returns as quickly as she can with a glass of water, a banana, and a box of his favorite crackers. She thought about making him soup, but didn’t feel like going through the trouble, and was worried he’d just end up spilling the entire bowl on himself and the sheets in the state he’s in. Easy-to-eat foods are a safer bet.

His eyes snap open as soon as she sinks back onto the bed, and he takes the glass of water eagerly but leaves the food items.

“Don’t you want to eat a little something?” she asks when he returns the glass but makes no move on the snacks.

“I don’t feel like eating,” he pouts.

“You need nourishment if you’re gonna fight this off, remember?”

He sighs, but finally concedes.

“Okay.”

He opens his mouth, looks at her, and just waits.

He’s got to be kidding. What the hell sort of virus is this? Has he been sick like this before? She’ll go mad before long, dealing with him like this.

Widening her eyes in disbelief but not arguing, she starts peeling the banana and breaks off a chunk of it with her fingers. All things considered, it’s not such a difficult thing for her to do for him, and he certainly doesn’t realize what he’s doing, not with his proper mind anyway, so she may as well avoid any confrontation and just appease him.

She slowly brings her hand to his mouth, him watching her the entire time not making it any less awkward, and sets the piece between his teeth. He chews it happily and swallows it down, immediately opening his mouth for the next piece. When she positions the second piece where he can take it, though, he pushes forward and closes his lips around her fingers, getting a good lick before he pulls away.

“Your fingersh tashe like salt an’ soap an’ squalene,” he mumbles through a mouthful of banana mush. “But I like it,” he adds thoughtfully, tilting his head to the side. “I wonder if your lips taste like that too.”

Her mouth opens but no sound comes out, much less any actual words.

“I think about kissing you sometimes.” He doesn’t seem to hear her sharp gasp, or notice the ways she clutches her hand over her chest as the air whooshes out of her lungs. “But it’s so scary.”

He thinks about kissing her??? She thought he’d made it perfectly clear after New Earth that he ‘absolutely knew it wasn’t her’ who kissed him in that hospital. That he knew it was Cassandra and ‘she had nothing to worry about.’ Sends a pretty clear message that a person doesn’t want to be kissed again. Or so she’d thought.

He’s completely out of his head. He can’t mean what he’s saying. Choking down the lump in her throat and doing her best to squash the seedlings of hope blossoming in her chest, she takes a deep breath.

“Why don’t you try and get some rest?” she says softly.

“Yeah.” His eyes drift closed again and he snuggles deeper into his blankets with a sigh.

“I’ll check on you in a bit.”

“NO!” His hand shoots out and clutches her arm, eyes flying open in horror. “Don’t leave. Please want you to stay.” His hand is sweltering and damp with sweat on her elbow, and his eyes are bloodshot and wide with panic.

“Shh, okay,” she soothes him, placing his arm back down on his chest and reaching up to touch his face. She brushes her thumb over his cheek, then moves her hand up to run her fingers through his hair. “I’ll stay. I won’t leave.”

“’Kay,” he breathes, instantly calmed by her words, his eyes already closing again. He’s always loved this, her playing with his hair, on the rare occasions she’s let her self-control slip enough to indulge him with it. “Good.”

She keeps combing through his hair as his breathing evens and slows. There’s still a bit of dust and crushed petals in it from where he faceplanted the ground in the cell (and again in the valley) but she brushes them off onto the pillowcase and then onto the floor. Somehow, though, it’s still soft and grease-free as ever. He’s lucky to be an alien in that regard, not even having to worry about the balancing act of how often to wash it, to somehow finding middle ground and avoiding dryness and oiliness. It’s just perfect no matter what he does. Well, he spends an eternity in front of the mirror every morning perfecting the look, but the texture and feel of it always stay the same. She’d kill for hair like his. But she’ll have to settle for touching it.

If Rose ended up inflicted with the same virus the Doctor has from all this close contact, she wouldn’t complain. Because it seems like the head massage is working: he’s knocked out. And if his begging a few minutes earlier was any indication, deep down the Doctor does want someone to take care of him, no matter how independent and self-sufficient he claims to be. And who wouldn’t? Being alone is dreadful. Something she hopes he never has to endure again.

Too worried about the Doctor waking up even more ill than he already is, Rose wanders around his room instead of trying to sleep. She’s rarely been invited in, and on the few occasions she has, she didn’t have much opportunity to look around, with the Doctor watching her like a hawk and usually rushing them out before she got a chance.

Glancing back at him often to make sure he hasn’t stirred, she charts out the room, admiring all the half-deconstructed gadgets and beautiful trinkets on his desk and armoire. She smells all the products in the en suite, from soap to deodorant, smiling as she matches the scents to memories of lingering hugs or being snuggled up next to him. She can read the labels on everything, except the hair product (which, incidentally, might have been the one she was most interested in). Circular inscriptions mark the small squeeze bottle she’s seen in his hand when she’s snuck up on him while he’s styling, ones she knows are the same language as in the console room. Someday she’ll get him to teach her to understand it. Hopefully. Even if she could only read and write her name and ‘Doctor,’ she’d be happy.

As the hours drag on, she runs out of objects around his room to scrutinize, so she picks up one of the books lying on his desk and flips through a few pages, surprised to find English text. She sees a few tables and a few more equations, and quickly tosses it back where it was. The next one has indecipherable Gallifreyan script, but she flips through a few photos of what appear to be step-by-step tutorials of repairs, and some diagrams of apparatus. Her last hope is a thin volume on his nightstand, and when she picks it up, dust clings to her fingertips. Wiping it off with her shirt, the title reads ‘Romeo and Juliet.’

She read this in grade school, but was too busy dating a prat to pay much attention in lectures or actually do the assigned reading. Most of what little she gleaned from it was from sleazy synopses she found online. Settling back against the headboard next to him, she dives in.

What she soon discovers, however, is that it’s not easy to read Shakespeare when you’re tired. And your head is aching. Why does he have to use such pretentious language to say something so simple?

Messy interlocking circles are scrawled across the pages in the Doctor’s hand, and many words and sentences are underlined or circled, but none of these mark-ups provide any clues to decode the text. Some of the lines are transparent enough, and she gets the gist of the first act, but most lines read like a foreign language the TARDIS isn’t translating.

And people say Cockney is confusing. Blimey.

She soldiers on, needing to do something to occupy her mind so she won’t nod off and leave the Doctor unattended. He hasn’t made a sound or even moved in the last couple of hours, but she still doesn’t want to risk it. She’s a heavy sleeper.

She shakes her head back and forth a few times and tries to focus on what Mercutio and Benvolio are saying.

\---

Rose startles awake to someone shaking her shoulder.

“Wha’!?” she calls out, sitting up. “Doctor?” she croaks, turning to find him staring at her, a curious look on his face.

“Morning,” he announces brightly enough. She clears her throat.

“Hi,” she responds quietly. “Sorry, must’ve fallen asleep…” She rubs her eyes blearily.

“No need to apologize. But… uhm… why’d you fall asleep in here?” he asks, and arching one eyebrow.

She stares back at him, searching his eyes for signs of recognition.

“You don’t remember?”

“I remember the virus. I remember telling you about it… but it all gets very hazy after we got to the TARDIS.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“Yep. Brilliant. Good as new.”

Not believing him, she rests her hand on his forehead.

It’s back to just slightly cooler than hers.

“See?”

“Yeah. Sorry. You’re right.” She fights the lethargy from being woken so suddenly, sitting up and stretching her arms. “Uhm… Last night though you… asked me to stay with you.”

“I did?”

She nods.

“Well. Thanks for staying then. My past self appreciates it.”

“You really don’t remember anything?” She can’t help the note of despondence that enters her voice; she was halfway hoping he would remember the loopy confessions he made and feel obligated to discuss what was said in the morning. That it would spark a renaissance in their relationship, somehow. But that was stupid. He _had_ warned that there’d be memory loss.

“Not really, no… why? Did something else… uhm… happen?”

He almost looks… worried they’d done the unthinkable while he was sick. What, does he think she’s so uncontrollably hormonal she’d take advantage of an ill person suffering from mental instability?

“No,” she assures him, shaking her head. “Was just wondering.”

“You sure?”

“Yep.”

“What else did I say?”

“Say? Not much really, a lot of random things, you talked about getting carpet in the console room for a while.”

He laughs at that.

“I’ve suffered through a viral fever a few times before, and it’s always unpleasant to hear from witnesses after the fact. Time Lords don’t have very many weaknesses, but that fever has got to be one of the biggest.”

“Was a bit funny,” she admitted, cracking a smile at the sight of him flipping over the railing. It wasn’t funny at all at the time, but now that he’s healthy and suffered no injuries from it, it’s a bit easier to see the humor in it.

“You also said…” she hesitated.

“What?” His voice drops an octave ominously.

She loses her nerve at the apprehension on his face.

“You said I could die from a fever but you wouldn’t let me.”

“It’s true,” he nods. “You could. And I won’t.” He smirks, and she returns it halfheartedly. “Is that all?” he asks, skeptical, like he knows it wasn’t what she was originally going to say. The disappointment she’s doing a terrible job of masking probably isn’t helping her case.

“Think so. Can’t really remember much else.” She shrugs with a laugh that sounds too nervous to be real.

“What is it? What did I say? I promise, if I said something offensive, I did not mean it. And I probably intended it to be a compliment, whatever it was. But the words may have come out wrong. Sometimes that even happens when I’m not mental with a fever, though, doesn’t it?”

Blimey, he never shuts up.

“No,” she interrupts to stop his gob. “Nothing offensive. Promise.”

“All right,” he concedes, but he still doesn’t look convinced. His eyes are all squinty. “Was it something… not offensive?”

He’s never gonna give this up. She should’ve known, he’s far too inquisitive and curious to drop anything, no matter how insignificant. But she can feel her cheeks turning red just considering the possibility of telling him the truth.

“It’s nothin’, okay?” she doesn’t mean to raise her voice, but it happens anyway. She does mean to climb off the bed, so she doesn’t have to face his questions anymore and she can maybe head to her own room and finally get in a shower. “I’m glad you’re feelin’ better.” She smiles to lighten the mood before turning to the door.

“Rose, wait!” he yells after her, and she hears the rustling of blankets and thumps of feet on the carpet as he chases after her.

She turns around just in time for him to grab her by the arms, demanding her attention with an intense gaze

“Thank you. For taking care of me last night. I know you must’ve been exhausted. And I am very, genuinely sorry for anything I said or did to upset you. I assure you I didn’t mean it.”

She sighs, and looks down to the floor.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” she mutters.

“Hmm?”

“You don’t think… I dunno. ‘S like when humans get drunk, they say things they wouldn’t normally say, but people always say it’s what they’ve actually felt all along, they just didn’t have the courage to say it before. ‘S that not what it’s like for you?”

“I…” He lets go of her, and runs a hand through his hair and flails the other one about in frustration. “I dunno.” He lets out a frustrated breath, and then goes silent for a few moments, eyes wandering everywhere but her face. “I can’t really say if I don’t know what it was I did. Can’t you just tell me? _Please_?” He clasps his hands together.

Now is as good a time as any to take a shot. It’ll be his fault, in the end, if he doesn’t share her desires, because he was the one who said something about it first, technically. He started it.

“You said you…” She can’t meet those penetrating brown eyes, so she stares down at his knees instead. “Thoughtaboutkissingme,” she rushes out through gritted teeth, face heating up and lips getting all tingly as soon as the words have left her mouth.

“Oh.” The single syllable leaves him with a whoosh of air.

Silence stretches between them for so long that her heart sinks into the pit of her stomach. She starts counting agonizingly to fifteen, when she’s going to turn around and storm out. But at thirteen, he finally breaks the quiet.

“And you’re…” he begins in a squeaky voice. “Angry about that?”

“No,” she insists, too loudly.

“Oh?”

“You said you didn’t mean anything you said.”

A beat.

“And you’re angry about _that_?”

She scowls at him, narrowing her eyes as menacingly as she can, but musters up a response with some attempt to save her dignity.

“I’m not angry about anything.” She speaks clearly and calmly as is possible when she’s shaking with nerves, then turns on her heels and marches for the door.

He stops her with a hand over her shoulder before she can get very far. Knowing full well he can outrun her and eventually he’ll get her to turn around and face him anyway, she spins around with a huff.

As soon as she’s facing him, though, he takes a deliberate step forward, cradles her jaw in his hands, and leans down to capture her lips with his.

All the tension in her body slackens and she melts against him, wrapping her arms around his neck and brushing her lips gently against his. They’re just as soft as she always imagined, that pouty lower one just as lush between hers when he tilts his head to deepen the kiss. His hands slide down to her waist to pull her closer, and she reaches up to comb her fingers through his hair. When they both breathe out a happy sigh with the added closeness, they break apart with giggles.

Hovering only a few inches apart, they smile nervously at each other for a few moments.

“About time,” she whispers, toying with the collar of his shirt.

“Less angry now?” he asks.

The cheeky sod.

“Maybe.” She nudges his calf with her foot for good measure.

Before he can say anything else arrogant, she tugs on the collar of his shirt and brings his mouth back to hers.


End file.
